Calvin and Hobbes

 

One of my favorite things about my village: I can always clearly see the stars. This also reminds me of sleeping on the roof at camp this summer, looking for shooting stars and watching the satellites.

Brovchenko and Cherevyk

I live on Brovchenko & Cherevyk Street. Every time I tell someone in Ukraine this, they say, "Huh?" because most streets in Ukraine are Lenina, Shevchenko, Kirova and other easily recognizable names.

Eventually at some point, I was told that my street is named after two local boys, Grigory Brovchenko and Opanas Cherevyk, from the World War II era who are considered heroes within my village. I finally got the story about what happened from a student, albeit in very general terms.

Here are buried young avengers

Brovchenko Grigory

Cherevyk Opanas

Tortured by Fascists in the year 1942

From grateful villagers

During the war, troops (I assume German) occupied my village and used cables to communicate. These two boys, aged 13 or 14, cut the cables one day, preventing the Germans from communicating. The troops were furious and threatened to kill everyone in the village. The two boys confessed to the crime and were hanged from a tree. I believe this happened in 1942.

Soostri

 

I'm happy he lives in my backyard. He's always unfailingly happy when he sees me, which always puts me in a good mood. How could you not love that face?

Holidays

Ukraine has a lot of them.

Over the past few weeks, my village and/or all of Ukraine has celebrated the following.

The day my village was freed from fascists. During the 20 minute break between classes, my students were lined up and marched out to the memorials in the center of the village. There was a quick speech by someone I didn't recognize and then all the younger children placed flowers at the foot of the memorial. The main memorial is of a large woman with a man strewn across her lap (Ukraine is referred to as the Motherland) and an eternal flame is at the base of the statue, though it's not lit anymore. [Though, "In Soviet times, it was always lit."] The only surviving World War II veteran also laid flowers down with the children, dressed in his old uniform.

 Those white puffs? Those are hair bows sported by Ukrainian children on holidays.

 Laying flowers

 One of my favorite students. This boy is a delight to teach.

 Veteran

Last Friday was Teacher's Day. Technically, Teacher's Day always falls on a Sunday but it's celebrated the preceding Friday. Interesting arrangement, eh? Anyway, my school had the first two lessons though I don't think anything was accomplished because everyone was too excited about the holiday. Then after that, the 11th form put on a performance/ceremony for all the teachers and made little skits where they pretended to have cellphone conversations in a specific teacher's lesson. My skit involved a student taking a phone call from Barack Obama and telling him I'm the best volunteer. It was cute, and then they gave every teacher a card and a small gift. Mine was a Little Mermaid coloring book.

 The boys cross-dressed and did a little dance

 Singing

This past Monday was the Day of Autumn. Every form had to make a display of food on a desk, and then they were judged on presentation. Some of the displays were not all that great but some of them were fairly intricate and well planned. I think the main point of the holiday is to celebrate the abundance of food from the previous seasons before heading into winter. I was given a couple bunches of grapes at the end of the day.

 9th Form

 10th Form

 8th-a Form

 11th Form

 6th Form

Evening Walk

8a Troubles - No more!

I mentioned earlier that instead of teaching the 5th form, I was teaching the 8a and 8b classes and that I wasn't particularly thrilled about this. Well, this past Monday I decided I'd had enough. I taught these kids last year and they behaved awfully then, and I stuck it out. They started out this year the exact same way, and I decided that over six months of trying to stick it out and change it was a decent effort, and I asked/told my cp that I didn't want to teach them anymore. We compromised and now I'm only teaching the 8b class, which isn't stellar but also isn't atrocious like 8a. The best part of this being that I think I was supposed to teach the 8th form because my librarian is close with my school director, and her granddaughter is in 8a, and my librarian asked for it to be arranged like this. This is a student whose English is fairly good, but she starts fights with other students, plays on her cell phone, and then when I give her a low grade for doing nothing, she says, "But it's me," like I accidentally gave her a low mark because she's used to being handed grades. And yes, as it turns out, me asking not to teach that class caused me a bit of drama at school. I was almost surprised by this. My non-cp English teacher asked me the next day what happened, because apparently she heard rumors about it while she was at the hospital. I'm always amazed by how little time it takes (bad) news to travel in Ukraine.

In other news, I found myself irritated at my students this week for a reason I haven't brought up before. I'm understanding when students are lagging behind in their education because they face certain barriers or hardships; I'm not so understanding when it's their own low expectations or desires for themselves. Kids who are completely content to sit in class and not even open their books, or pretend to be trying, who think that if they merely copy a text word for word because I keep telling them they need to be participating, that they'll earn a decent grade, because hey! they actually did something today.

I was listening to "Get Better" by Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip and one part goes like this:

So it really ain't a case of rich or poor, It's a case of self-motivation and nothing more, Like Billy says, whether you have or you have not wealth, The system might fail you, But don't fail yourself

I would really like to make my kids listen to or tell them that, but I can clearly picture the facial expression that would evoke from them and well, I just don't feel like getting any more "She's crazy" looks because I'm doing something that's not Ukrainian.

I know I write a lot about things that frustrate me, but don't misunderstand. I've realized during the past couple of weeks that I really do like living in Ukraine, and I've learned to appreciate it for everything it is and accept it for everything it's not.

We're at a good place in our relationship, Ukraine and I.